Why love –and therapy– means going in a direction you don’t yet know (w/ Dr. Orna Guralnik)

hi I'm Dr Orna garalnik I am a psychologist and a psychoanalyst and I'm also the therapist on the docu-series couples therapy on Showtime and does it feel representative to you of your non-filmed treatments in certain essential ways it's very representative um the work is the work it's I mean that's one of the things that startled me um the first season we started filming it um which was wow the work is just the work it doesn't matter like I'm cameras are there like there's like it's going to be edited it's it's you'd think that it would like completely morph everything but then we start talking and the things that matter to people are just there and my response since I just do what I do because of the fact that it's documented it's um the process is intensified and everything happens faster what would have taken me in my regular process in my regular practice probably somewhere between like six to eight to sometimes 12 months can happen like in three to four months there there's a certain kind of intensity that comes with the the feeling that okay it's now or never we're on film this is real there's no we don't have like forever to keep this going um so in that sense it's it's quite intensified it's hard to avoid for me the feeling that obviously the couple who are sitting on the couch in front of you are in treatment but also we as the viewer are in some way in treatment with you as well that we are getting to to learn about how we can communicate better with our partners to learn about the ways in which we self-sabotage or are blind to the obstacles that we're putting up to our own happiness and our relationship well-being how much are you consciously thinking about like this is the message that I want to get out to these millions of people because obviously you're treating more people than you could ever see in a in a career I think over time I have become more aware of that I think there's a part of me that increasingly feels more and more the way I feel when I teach um I'm aware of the responsibility and and I'm I assume the couples to some degree have that too that there's a certain kind of responsibility that one feels that like that this is to some degree a service I think the the longer I've been doing this the more I've become aware of the fact that what we're doing and I think the couples are aware of that too to some degree maybe not consciously that what we're doing is also in addition to the particular work that we're doing couple and me that we're also doing some active service for the public it's it's some kind of teaching or active service of sharing a certain kind of process or vulnerability or knowledge I think it's interesting to me from watching the show and reading your writing you're in a field where people often come to you when they're in crisis where their relationship is having a lot of conflict and they're trying to solve that and yet and correct me if I'm wrong you seem to really believe in love and the power and importance of love love is kind of one of those things it's like Health it's like curiosity it's something that if things are not getting in our way it's a natural thing that flows out of us we we want to connect we want to attach we want to love we want to transcend ourselves and care for others I think we're just wired that way and I think uh it brings out the best in us and life is just better when there's love when we love when we're loved when we witness love it's it's it's the good stuff of life and I do generally despite everything that we could say to the contrary I do believe that love prevails when you're first meeting a couple and they're in a spot where maybe they don't believe that love is about to prevail how do you start thinking about the questions that you're going to ask that will get to the heart of the matter of of what is really going on in their in their story it depends on many things it depends on first of all what is the therapist school of thought like generally like each therapist comes with a certain um assumptions theoretical assumptions about couple Hood Dynamics what works therapy and then it depends on the particularities of each couple the the individuals and the couple Dynamic that presents um and some of the process is trial and error I might aim to for example work on a certain kind of dynamic but if I don't get any traction I realize oh wait a minute we have to switch gears and work on childhood stuff or attachment issues or emotional regulation it depends on some of it is trial and error and who the people are there's a moment in the second season of couples therapy that I feel like is a really interesting one I wanted to talk to you about one of the couples uh Johnny and Matthew he kind of says like it's now that you recognize the problem it's so easy I'm paraphrasing but he says like why don't you just change and you step in and say well actually I'm of the belief that until you understand the deeper story and where you've learned these roles that you actually can't change so that's not just as simple as just doing it differently it seems like that's kind of not the pop culture understanding of change right we tend to think like just do it differently why don't you just do it and and you seem to really believe in that moment that you have to get at the deeper root issues before you even have the power to change even if you're aware that what you're doing is not serving you yeah um that is yeah that's exactly right that you're connecting it to the theoretical background you have to sometimes be really in the thick of it and have a new experience when you're in the thick of your stuff to change and that takes uh trust and risk and time and you got to kind of allow yourself to get in there whether it's with your partner or in the presence of a therapist or when you're in analysis you gotta like be in the meat and juice of things to feel your actual wiring change and the other thing is that we're we're motivated again I'm speaking as a psychoanalyst we're motivated by many things that we're not aware of we have our conscious mind which is you know like the tip of the iceberg and then we have so many things underlying our conscious Minds that motivate us and and all we can do is kind of Glimpse at all these like little derivatives of that vast unconscious and and try to get Clues as to what's going on underneath and that again takes time and courage and trust it's not something it's not like a 10 a list of 10 things you can do to make things better yeah I love your pushback on that first of all especially because that that is kind of the framework that we often use on a show like this right it is kind of like our episode titles are literally how to do something yeah and yet I I'm a huge fan of people pushing back on that and complicating that and I myself am very skeptical of it most of the time so I love the idea that it's it's more complicated and that you can't reduce it to that um and yet also there there are these actionable things that that individuals can do do you think that it's just that you can't make a universal or that um they can't kind of be so easily boiled down into a simple list you can make universals there are certain things that are always true you know it's always true for example that um all of us need to do better listening that's a universal truth and you will solve a lot of problems if you listen better and you regulate your emotional response how do you do that we can know all of that and then in real time it all flies out the window so it's not that there aren't Universal truths that will make everything better but in real time people are in the grip of um whether it's their trauma history or whether it's their inner world that that um colors the way they see reality and the grip of that inner movie that's going on all the time it's not amenable to just these statements like oh you should listen better a person can know they should listen better but when they're like burning inside with some feeling of Injustice or some Grudge that they're holding or whatever they don't want to listen better they they it's out the window they're just in the grip of things obviously many people know you from your work on on couples therapy but also you have a ton of academic research and in your papers you've you've written up several um very accessible papers to the layperson one of the big themes of the ones that I read was the idea that not only are we beholden to these internal forces that we may not even be aware of but we're also bowled into these huge external historical forces right you you write about um being in treatment with a woman who's uh Grandparents were in the Nazi party and you read about the ways in which you as a Jewish person with Israeli Heritage and and she are acting out some of those historical patterns and you've also talked about that with your patients of color where there's the ideas of colonialism and the history of racism those are those are inherently in the room and can't be avoided um I think that's a different idea again than many people have of therapy right that it's not just about me and my own problems but it's also these societal forces psychoanalysts generally do tend to focus more on individual personal history which you know anything that has to do with like a person's childhood um things that happen to them throughout their lives that affect the way they think now and then all of this that is supposedly resides in the unconscious and influences how people perceive things and respond traditionally analysts were less clued into these gigantic influences that big history systemic issues issues that have to do with like you know it could be even like a person can be motivated by grudges between like I can imagine in the future like a couple like two generations down like a Russian and Ukrainian being in a relationship and not even aware of the fact that what's happening nowadays is going to affect two generations down and how they perceive like certain fights they're going to have about like how to load the dishwasher might be traced all the way back to what's happening now between like the invasion of Ukraine these they're very big things that sit in the in the back of our mind and Define us as individuals and um shape how we see the world and shape the kind of um things that move us things that upset us our feelings about ethics or you know relationships are um many political systems right people constantly have to negotiate negotiate different needs different interests different histories um and these kind of big historical systemic racial class backgrounds very much influence how they think of negotiating difference it seems to me like there's been a real increased awareness of and openness to in the past couple years uh systemic thinking when it comes to politics and when it comes to culture right the idea that like what I do as an individual it's not that it's not important but that I can't stop climate change by recycling three more cardboard boxes the idea that like me trying to be confronting of uh internal biases and racism and those kind of issues those that's important but there's also this systemic racism piece I think people are so much more open to those ideas now but something that at least I don't hear as much about that you seem to be a real proponent of is the idea that uh our emotional and our our mental well-being is also systemic that we're not individuals in that sense either or not individuals alone just a pre-associated piggyback on what you just said I think I've noticed like during the pandemic and and in response to like the um immense impact that the BLM movement had like the black lives matter had I've noticed a real difference in how people in relationships talk to each other and it doesn't have to be they don't need to be talking about race at all I mean it can be like a white on white or black on black couple it doesn't matter but there's a very different kind of discourse that is possible now between people where they check their privilege right they check the subject position from which they're speaking they don't just take things for granted but they pause for a second and think wait where am I located in the bigger system and who am I talking to and what are the power implications or what am I taking for granted and what are ways that I'm not able to listen because of my particular background how am I blind or deaf to certain things that the other person is experiencing all of that has made in a way my work as a therapist a lot easier a bad alone is fascinating to me that idea that those changes have made your work easier and that people are more willing to acknowledge like oh I come from a place where what I am doing affects the people around what would you say it was like before I think people just spoke from within their position without without feeling like they need to check it they need to double look at where they're speaking from and in terms of your question about like how these things affect our entire system not only our I don't know negotiation skills but like our emotional lives of course just to give you an example just from from daily practice um you know one of the things that couples talk about a lot is money right sort of one of the Arenas that people find their differences and it's also just so concrete that it's it's a great place to negotiate and um people's entire emotional World about money of course is deeply shaped by their class situation race situation the intersection of it gender politics all of these like giant systemic issues affect their experience of money the experience of do I have the capacity to support myself is there a safety net or not for me it all of these questions will affect the immediate emotional response they have when they see their partner's credit card bill when they try to negotiate what should we spend on it's interesting because we've had a few experts in the past on money issues who are talking kind of about the nuts and bolts of of budgeting and that sort of stuff but but every one of them across the board has said some version of money is not really just about money it's about values it's about priorities it's about what you care about and what you're afraid of it seems like a lot of what you're teaching people who watch the show is is also to destigmatize the the world of therapy or or maybe to bring people in so that it's not just uh wealthy white people on the show it's not just heterosexual couples it's uh it's not just people who I think this is certainly a stereotype that I had in my head about couples counseling is that it's not people who are kind of elongating the end and that they come in and it's already too late and certainly you have people on where you come to the conclusion that like let's wind this down in a way that is healthy and productive but many of the people make transformative breakthroughs so um it seems like that is one of the big messages that people take away or you're hoping people will take away absolutely both both that this way of working and thinking is for everyone it's it should not be only for the well enriched and not only for white and upper class um to wanting to make it more accessible and available um and to beyond that to in a way underscore the fact that we're all similar class skin color history I mean all of these things of course they shape Everything But at the bottom of it in the heart of it were similar we can completely relate to I assume people can completely relate to every couple on the show people often say to us that oh in the beginning they couldn't stand this person or they thought that person was totally wrong and then they spent enough time with the couple and then they're like oh actually that's me I also think one of the radical parts to me of the show is how much you are yourself vulnerable and are willing to show the ways in which you don't know the answers in which you struggle I mean many episodes feature you going to your peer group or to your mentor and saying I don't know I'm stuck how do I fix this which yeah that feels very radical because you're in a position of power and you're giving up the power and that's not something we see very often first of all I'm glad you're saying that and and seeing that um first of all that is the psychoanalytic in in its heart that is the psychoanalytic method which is that we're always leaning into the part of the psyche that we don't know you know what you know is useless it's it's already over it's done what you know I mean what you want is to go into the direction that you don't yet know if I had to like boil down like a central message that both psychoanalytic work and couples work teaches it is you know open up a kind of negative space within yourself where you don't know so that you can actually learn something new about the other person and if you don't go to the places that you don't know you're not going to actually hear anyone other than yourself you know in addition to this podcast I'm a comedian and one of the most common things that people say when they find out that you're a comedian right is is tell me a joke or some version of oh I could never do that that's so scary to be up on stage I'm guessing that the couple's counselor version of that is some version of like you must hear the wildest stories but then also well I'm glad that my partner and I don't need that right so what do you say to couples who may avoid therapy because they feel like going would be an admission that their relationship is somehow failing or that it's not for them it's for other people what do you tell people who are have that resistance to it um I don't say anything honestly they're not they're not there they're not ready they're scared I'm okay um and I don't think anything I I I'm just like you're not curious to go to your Edge you want to stay where you are okay that's where you live sorry I'm just curious when you when you're just about what you said about comedians like what do you think about as a comedian what do you think about what I said about the going towards the not knowing because I assume you have to do that all the time right sure I think that one of the biggest things that people have as a misconception is people will often try it as almost as a compliment to say like well I'm sure that you never bomb on stage and I I always say to them well if you're not bombing you're a terrible comedian like the whole point is you have to try things that are new and different and what work and you have to be conscious of where you do that I don't try and do that when I'm auditioning for something but if you're not failing if you're not going past the bounds of what you can do and what you know will work then your jokes just get worse and worse and worse because they're the same jokes but they're more and more tired and old so exactly so it's the same you're you're looking for the same space yeah fundamentally it's true of most humans that if you want to create something new and different you have to push past the comfortable and you have to go into the Zone where you are making mistakes and failing and it's not always working it is interesting though because like you said I mean you said like if people don't want to do that they're comfortable that's fine they don't have to do that I mean certainly I would never encourage someone who doesn't want to be a comedian to be a comedian even if you do want to be a comedian we already have too many we don't need more but but if you don't want to definitely don't do it and yet maybe this is just me uh responding to the piece of like dominant Society right now that says like everyone should be in therapy therapy is almost like a check box that people should do but I do feel like there's something different about examining yourself and your relationships then creating art like if you don't create art okay maybe that's not right for you but if you don't examine your relationships sometimes I feel like real harm can come from that from you not being ready to do it true because you live among other people and you might have a family and yeah we affect each other yes agree although a world without art would also be a pretty miserable world of course yes maybe if it's okay I'm curious to hear from from you personally you were born in the United States and then you spent your early life here and then you moved to Israel and you lived in a society that was it was had a very big shift from kind of an individualistic Society to a much more collectivist society and now you're back and I wonder how having to make sense of these different ways of organizing the world and different ways of organizing human relationships have played into your work and your interest in this kind of work I think I've over the years I've come to think of that as probably one of the defining um historical elements of my life that kind of shaped the way I experienced the world this the these kind of shifts between cultures I think one way that it informs my couple's work is that I it's not that difficult for me to understand different perspectives um and to understand why some of these differences don't necessarily work and to try to think how to kind of figure that out like what what would it take um or another way to say it is um I never quite completely trust one particular perspective even if someone is like deeply embedded in the way they see things and and can give all the rationale for why the way they see the world and and their ideology and their feelings and all of that is like totally true and makes so much sense I'm always a little like eh but you can see it another way too because I've had to go through that um so and you know some of my patients actually find that maddening it's not always um it's not all it's not always Pleasant um it's shaped my interest in the the less clear boundary between individual and Collective forces this is kind of a completely different thing but I'm also because of the the very important Israeli influence um I'm very much kind of a communal Collective team kind of person I like doing things with other people I I mean one of the great things about working on this show is that I'm working with this like unbelievably wonderful team just just it just every day brings me so much joy and interest when you watch back episodes of the show what are you most struck by okay there's one thing that always happens when I watch which it it's just there's it feels to me like [Music] um they cook up some kind of magic I don't understand how they do what they do where the way I the way you know there's the world out there and then there's the way we in inside our mind we think about the world and we have our little storylines that we follow and each of us is always narrating something about what's going on and when I see what they've done it never feels to me like it's coming from outside it always feels to me like oh my God they've somehow clicked into my unconscious and they saw things the way I saw them how did they do that it's like they visited my dream ah that's a great feeling it's it's amazing it's it's it's completely shocking and it has to do with I mean we talk a lot I talk a lot with the with the team all the time about the material like with the directors the editors there's all the time endless conversations about what's going on um and they just listed incredibly well and and and somehow we've developed this kind of hive mind so that's the most striking to me and then um the other thing that I love in in watching the material is um how much the camera and the way they edit how much they love the couples um I don't know if you feel that way but there's so much love subjects and respect um and so much interest in their Humanity there's no it's never kind of a sneering or cynical take on the subjects it's always like trying to go inside them and hold them with dignity um there's a real generosity to the show it occurs to me that there are many people on the show and I imagine in your practice outside of the show as well who are coming with very different racial or cultural backgrounds into the relationship can you talk about some of the complications that arise in relationships where both Partners don't have the shared socio-political cultural historical factors in their lives yeah sure first of all I have to say that to some degree I think it's always there if you if you drill there's always some kind of difference even if the couples seem like you know they're like made of the same cloth at some point you'll discover that on some level there's some kind of difference that um makes for interesting Dynamics um but to the more obvious differences you know the the most obvious is when there's um an interracial couple that come to the to certain aspects of relationship with different expectations or different um different predictions about outcome or class I mean it's hard to separate you know race and class but um again to go back to for example the issue of like finances um or just a sense of security in the future people with different uh class slash race Heritage have a very different sense of projection into the future whether it's oh if the money Runs Out are we going to be on the street are we going to be homeless versus it's going to be okay there's going to be a safety Network so the level of anxiety about the Futures could be very different and that can influence how people negotiate like one person might feel like oh my God we're in we're in the red we're in like a crisis and the other person might feel like it's okay why are you freaking out anger what's an okay way to express anger gender stereotypes um men who have trouble finding ways to even think about their own dependency needs or their own certain kinds of vulnerability and having to like twist themselves into all sorts of pretzels because society and the way they've been indoctrinated into masculinity doesn't allow them to just say hey I'm feeling lonely can you give me a hug you know I'm curious how you think about changing your own narratives and what do you do when you recognize that you have a story that you're telling yourself about your relationship over the years I mean look I'm I'm old and I've been through several analyzes and each analyst that I've worked with has changed my way of thinking about narrative so I've been through many the way I've moved cultures I've moved analysts and I've moved schools of thought um and also you know have become parented two different children so I I I've changed many many narratives so in that sense it makes it a little easier nowadays when I notice myself getting caught in a particular story especially if it's story that's like bugging me like oh my partner isn't doing this that or the other or um or one of my kids blah blah blah just the narratives you know they they when they when you get stuck in a narrative it tends to have a certain kind of flavor it starts to like bug you something about the repetitive nature of it and at this point I already know oh okay I'm in one of those and I have a few different methods of kind of trying to deconstruct it you know often I will go into like okay how is this like some kind of revisit a repetition of some kind of childhood narrative um or is this narrative often nowadays it's less about that and it's more like okay how is this narrative serving to help me avoid the thing that's really hard for me to do um that's that's one of the main ones I go to um oh how is this narrative actually convenient for me to avoid something that's actually difficult for me can we discuss the idea of goals in therapy and how you measure progress uh what is there a point when you feel like a couple is done or a person is done how do you judge that it's different between couples and and individuals um very different but with couples first of all usually the work with couples is so much shorter than with individuals um but with couples when the kind of intensity and toxicity of their conflict goes down and it feels like you know a working relationship in the sense I mean my goal is not to free liberate people from conflict I mean conflict is part of life but if a couple figures out a way to work through difference without going into like um unnecessarily uh triggering toxic feelings then my work is done I mean they don't need me or if I feel like whatever I'm saying is if I'm just running out of new things to say if I'm saying the same thing over and over and either it's they already know it or I'm not making a dent which also sometimes sadly happens then it's time to move on if I'm running out of things to say it sort of means the therapy is over this is I have several friends who are our therapists and one of my favorite questions for them because it just seems like this has to happen a lot is that how often does like someone walk in the room and you know the thing they have to realize and you're like please just say this one sentence and it'll get there and it'll be done and it's like months and then they say it and you're like finally we're there and I know that's obviously that's a huge reductive vision of it but it does feel like it does happen like people can walk in and you know you know I know I know if I said it right now it's going to mean nothing to them but eventually they're going to get it and they're going to be fine well thank you so much it's been it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you I really appreciate you making the time same here Chris Chris as yours positions I love you went to the things that matter to me personally so thank you

Channel: TED Audio Collective

Views: 14,702

Keywords: TED, TED Audio Collective, Ideas worth spreading, podcast, podcast english

Id: uIpSWa7ZuNo

Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023